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The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry

Making Your Own Days

The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry

From one of the most esteemed American poets of the twenty-first century comes a celebration of poetry and an invitation for anyone to experience its beauty and wonder.

Full of fresh and exciting insights, Making Your Own Days illuminates the somewhat mysterious subject of poetry for those who read it and for those who write it—as well as for those who would like to read and write it better. By treating poetry not as a special use of language but as a distinct language—unlike the one used in prose and conversation—Koch clarifies the nature of poetic inspiration, how poems are written and revised, and what happens to the heart and mind while reading a poem.

Koch also provides a rich anthology of more than ninety works from poets past and present. Lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and poetic plays, poems in English, and poems in translation from Homer and Sappho to Lorca, Snyder, and Ashbery; each selection is accompanied by an explanatory note designed to complement and clarify the text and to put pleasure back into the experience of poetry.

Praise

"Ned Rorem A person in love is torn between needing to keep his enthusiasm secret and wanting to share it with the world. Kenneth Koch in his new book strikes the ideal compromise. How generous he is with his patient intelligence, and how original with his crucial perception! Like all real artists, he shows us what we did not know we knew. He is that rare phenomenon, the poet who can write prose"

– prose that is necessary and lucid. In his book, he offers a new and healthy dimension to the life of virtually everyone.

"Ned Rorem A person in love is torn between needing to keep his enthusiasm secret and wanting to share it with the world. Kenneth Koch in his new book strikes the ideal compromise. How generous he is with his patient intelligence, and how original with his crucial perception! Like all real artists, he shows us what we did not know we knew. He is that rare phenomenon, the poet who can write prose"

– prose that is necessary and lucid. In his book, he offers a new and healthy dimension to the life of virtually everyone.

"Frank Kermode I would recommend Koch's way of teaching poetry above all others. His book is informative, witty, amd surprising. It's also authoritative. I hope it has the great success it deserves; it is a precious defense of poetry."

Read an Excerpt

Making Your Own Days

The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry

By Kenneth Koch

Excerpts

Chapter 1

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About the Author

Kenneth Koch is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Straits, and won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1994. He has also published fiction and plays, as well as books on the teaching of poetry: Wishes, Lies and Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and I Never Told Anybody. He lives in New York City, where he is professor of English at Columbia University.